Deadly Prison Riot In Welikade

There is a crazy riot going on at Welikade prison. It sounded like the STF (Army/Police collabo unit paramilitary police) went in to search, which the prisoners weren’t happy about, and they’ve rioted. It seems like they might have had guns and reportedly got into the prison armoury (?) and things have gotten really bad. There are dead bodies in the road and journalists are being hit, not to mention prisoners and police. Welikade is actually in the middle of a fairly populated part of town, so this is pretty bad.

The Mirror has good coverage, check it out. They break the page up funny, though. These are the latest updates, which you only get on the front page:

21.00 – The Chief jailor of the prison and several STF personnel were reportedly trapped inside the prison

21.00 -The number of injured rise up to 35 and six in critical condition

20.47 – Due to the heavy rain the planned operation to break into the prison has been suspended

20.25 – More than eight bodies were brought to the General Hospital

20.25 – Heavily armed additional troops have been placed on the walls surrounding the prison. Ambulances have been parked outside the premises and the armed forces are believed to be planning to break into the prison (Daily Mirror)

Really shocking, the sheer amount of life and blood, and this siege is still going on.

Can’t agree more with the death penalty. There are many Sri Lankans who are nothing but uncivilised, primitive, barbaric savages. Have a look at that horrific slaughter of a man on a public street in Galle. Limbs literally hacked off in public and videotaped — its available for viewing if you look in the right places. Its surprising (or is it?) such little attention has been paid to that outrage.

So you don’t think that the fact that Kalu Thushara is dead is good thing? Well then you are probably a saint, and I respect that. But don’t expect me to agree with you because I am not a saint.

I am genuinely happy that Kalu Thushara is dead. I think the way it happened is bad, for obvious reasons. But the fact that he’s dead, taken in isolation, is a good thing. It’s good for the taxpayers. It’s good for the society in general. I bet those who were the victims of his cruelty would feel that justice has finally been done.

As I’ve said previously, laws should be about justice. Those who murder and rape should be punished with something equally severe for laws to work.

Other than that, what exactly are the specifics of the problem? We have situation where the number of prisoners is growing continuously. It’s important that people keep this in mind. The number of prisoners is going up. It isn’t going down, and it doesn’t stay at the same level. We have a government that is buried in debt. We have defense spendings that are not going to go down for a long time. The salaries of the soldiers themselves take a large portion of money out. We have a global economic crisis going on. We have Greece that is very close to go down, along with the rest of Europe. We have China with its GDP growth rate slowing down. So we really can’t afford spend a dime more on the prison system. None of this would’ve happened if the prison was run the way it is supposed to. But we can’t run them the way they are supposed to.

In the meanwhile, we have serious crimes going on. I don’t have exact statistics, but I bet the crime rate has gone up during and after the war than it was before the war. We have restless youths with military training doing worse things than cat calling. Perhaps since you definitely don’t belong to lower class or lower middle class, you can afford to be detached from this whole thing and think the death of Kalu Thushara isn’t a good thing. But rampant lawlessness is there in this country and people suffer because of it. So something needs to be done fast, as effitiently and inexpensively as possible. The only way to do it is to crack down on the underworld as hard as possible. We need to squash them. Many Western liberal democracies did just that before they became what they are now.

They should have brought in snipers right from the start. If they placed a section on the Wesley College roof, each sniper could have dropped five guys before they got to cover. Woulda cleared the prison roof in a minute. Then they could have choppered in commandos in an air assault. It would have been all over in an hour.

I don’t think that was that easy (not “doing it” but the authorizing part for that kind of operation).
I don’t think the security forces and the police was hoping for a gun battle until some tried to escape while shooting.
Even then you can see police with riot gear. And you don’t bring riot gear to a gun battle.
After that DIG was shot, it went from quelling a riot to military assault.